Unity environment in good shape, on track for Ubuntu 11.04

Ubuntu's new Unity environment is on track to land in 11.04. A recent …

In an ongoing mailing list thread, the Ubuntu Technical Board is discussing whether the new Unity environment is a suitable default for the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 release, codenamed Natty Narwhal. The prevailing view seems to be that Unity is still on track, but there are a number of technical issues that are still being addressed.

Unity is a new user interface shell and window management system that is designed to improve Ubuntu's ease of use and visual sophistication. A previous version of Unity served as the netbook user experience in Ubuntu 10.10. The plan for 11.04, codenamed Natty Narwhal, is to ship the much-improved new version of Unity as the standard user experience across desktop and netbook form factors.

Unity introduces a universal menu bar, a vertical task management dock that is anchored to the left-hand screen edge, and a set of overlays called "lenses" for accessing files and applications. Implemented as a plug-in for the Compiz window manager, Unity makes extensive use of compositing and hardware accelerated rendering to deliver elegant visual effects.

Many of the concepts behind Unity were drafted by a team of professional designers and software usability specialists with the aim of significantly improving the Ubuntu user experience. Their close attention to detail shines through in many aspects of Unity. The menubar is clean and highly functional. The sidebar dock is visually appealing and has excellent default behaviors for automatic hiding.

Although there is a lot to like in Unity, there are some aspects of the Unity environment that still feel unpolished and poorly thought out. The interface for browsing available applications sticks out as a particularly weak part of the user experience. The mechanism for switching between application categories is irksome and visually tacky. The lists of random packages from the repositories, which are presented as applications that are available for installation in the launcher, are distracting and largely superfluous.

Developing a complete user interface shell is a significant undertaking. The plan to deliver a new Compiz-based version of Unity in 11.04 seemed tremendously ambitious when it was presented at the last Ubuntu Developer Summit. It wasn't clear at the start of the cycle whether it would be ready on time. The most recent assessment of the desktop team and the Ubuntu Technical Board indicates that it is still on track.

In a mailing list post written this week, Ubuntu engineering chief Rick Spencer briefly outlined some of the remaining technical issues in order to open up further discussion about potential roadblocks. Bugs like crashers and memory leaks are said to be well under control.

"The Desktop Team still feels strongly that Unity will provide the better experience for most users, is stable enough to ship, and will be more stable by the time final media is spun," wrote Spencer. "In terms of the instability of the system, the Desktop and Dx teams report that most remaining instabilities in Beta 2 are crashers related to making changes in ccsm. These crashers, and the other known widespread crashers are either fixed in Beta 2, or are scheduled to be fixed in the current Dx milestone that ends this week."

Canonical's uncompromising commitment to conforming with the schedule of Ubuntu's time-based release cycle sometimes encourages a no-such-thing-as-a-blocker mentality that is not entirely conducive to robust releases. At the start of the Natty cycle, there was room for concern about a premature Unity release detracting from the quality of 11.04. It seems to be in good shape, however.

In such a far-reaching user interface overhaul, good first impressions are extremely important for achieving user acceptance. Spencer has set the right tone during this development cycle by defining high quality standards for Unity and subjecting it to disciplined scrutiny at regular intervals.

There is still a lot of room for improvement, but Unity is arguably a strong improvement over the conventional GNOME 2.x environment for day-to-day use. The breadth of the changes may be disorienting for some users, but most will like what they see when Unity lands on their desktop at the end of the month.

94 Reader Comments

I was impressed by 10.04, but there has always been one problem, the gain control on microphones just doesn't exist in a graphical form. You've always got to drop to a console and use the NCURSES ALSA mixer. Then set it up to always do that on boot. Windows 95 had a basic graphical mixer 16 years years ago.

After using one of the alphas for the next release, I realized Unity can't really offer a decent experience because Ubuntu is still too tied to gnome. The very useful Alt+F2 hotkey for launching programs simply didn't exist in Unity, and the provided launcher was laughable at best.

I've since downgraded to 10.04 LTS and realized LTSs are the only releases anyone looking for a productive environment should really consider. 6-month cycles are great for fostering innovation, but they really feel like betas most of the time. Everything breaks from one upgrade to the other and finding support online for so many different releases is unbearable. More often than not, you'll find a blog post or FAQ which gives you an answer for a different release than that which you're running.

For me Unity, while not perfect, is way ahead of Gnome 3.0 in usability and practicality. Not to mention Unity was developed in a fraction of the time, which means it will probably improve quicker than Gnome 3.0 as well. I think come the next LTS release (12.04) Ubuntu will finally be a compelling switch for average Windows users.

After using one of the alphas for the next release, I realized Unity can't really offer a decent experience because Ubuntu is still too tied to gnome. The very useful Alt+F2 hotkey for launching programs simply didn't exist in Unity, and the provided launcher was laughable at best.

I've since downgraded to 10.04 LTS and realized LTSs are the only releases anyone looking for a productive environment should really consider. 6-month cycles are great for fostering innovation, but they really feel like betas most of the time. Everything breaks from one upgrade to the other and finding support online for so many different releases is unbearable. More often than not, you'll find a blog post or FAQ which gives you an answer for a different release than that which you're running.

This is yet another reason the Ubuntu experience can't go mainstream.

This.

I´m currently running 10.04 LTS with the latest kernel 2.6.38-8 from the kernel-ppa [1], and I´m very pleased with it.

Once tried ubuntu-netbook from the official repos, it was nice, but nothing to write home about.

@Scorp1us Ubuntu is open source. You are always welcomed to contribute.

not everyone who uses a computer is a developer. your point is moot.

r3loaded wrote:

drummania wrote:

@Scorp1us Ubuntu is open source. You are always welcomed to contribute.

Not everyone is a programmer. Some people want to just use Linux without having to change the code in the OS itself.

Since when did "contribute" equate to "developer"/"programmer?" Ubuntu breaks it out into distinct categories.

Way to miss the forest. drummania basically told Scorp1us that if he didn't like the way Unity worked, he was free to fix it himself, which is one of the most overused and arrogant attitudes that has plagued the FOSS community for the past decade and a half, IMO.

I was impressed by 10.04, but there has always been one problem, the gain control on microphones just doesn't exist in a graphical form. You've always got to drop to a console and use the NCURSES ALSA mixer. Then set it up to always do that on boot. Windows 95 had a basic graphical mixer 16 years years ago.

The gui interface is called sound and you can open it by typing "sudo gnome-volume-control"

Anyhow I invite everybody to try ubuntu 11.04 (now in beta, or in a few weeks the stable release) and see that most of the point made by ryan paul are just FUD. Unity is REALLY beautiful.

And I would like to point to ryan that a tight schedule is the main difference between debian and ubuntu. 5 years after the split of the two we can say that a tight schedule is a good thing for improvement.

For me Unity, while not perfect, is way ahead of Gnome 3.0 in usability and practicality. Not to mention Unity was developed in a fraction of the time, which means it will probably improve quicker than Gnome 3.0 as well. I think come the next LTS release (12.04) Ubuntu will finally be a compelling switch for average Windows users.

it's just ryan that is paid to spread FUD and low quality garbage/opinions, labeled as factual articles.

Way to miss the forest. drummania basically told Scorp1us that if he didn't like the way Unity worked, he was free to fix it himself, which is one of the most overused and arrogant attitudes that has plagued the FOSS community for the past decade and a half, IMO.

That's not what I read. Rather, it was a poorly defined statement suggesting he contribute. Sure, you can read whatever things you want into it, if it reinforces your distaste for the FOSS community. As people have noted in follow up comments, one doesn't need to be a programmer to submit suggestions or ideas.

mascarpone wrote:

it's just ryan that is paid to spread FUD and low quality garbage/opinions, labeled as factual articles.

it's just ryan that is paid to spread FUD and low quality garbage/opinions, labeled as factual articles.

Ryan says: "Unity is arguably a strong improvement over the conventional GNOME 2.x environment for day-to-day use. The breadth of the changes may be disorienting for some users, but most will like what they see when Unity lands on their desktop at the end of the month."

For me Unity, while not perfect, is way ahead of Gnome 3.0 in usability and practicality. Not to mention Unity was developed in a fraction of the time, which means it will probably improve quicker than Gnome 3.0 as well. I think come the next LTS release (12.04) Ubuntu will finally be a compelling switch for average Windows users.

it's just ryan that is paid to spread FUD and low quality garbage/opinions, labeled as factual articles.

WTF are you on about? I have no idea. What has my post got to do with your frankly stupid opinion of Ryan Paul?

After using one of the alphas for the next release, I realized Unity can't really offer a decent experience because Ubuntu is still too tied to gnome. The very useful Alt+F2 hotkey for launching programs simply didn't exist in Unity, and the provided launcher was laughable at best.

Alphas are there for feedback. If you had a problem with it, the best thing is to create bug so that your concerns can be addressed.

airstrike wrote:

I've since downgraded to 10.04 LTS and realized LTSs are the only releases anyone looking for a productive environment should really consider. 6-month cycles are great for fostering innovation, but they really feel like betas most of the time. Everything breaks from one upgrade to the other and finding support online for so many different releases is unbearable. More often than not, you'll find a blog post or FAQ which gives you an answer for a different release than that which you're running.

That's exactly what the LTS builds are for. However, the non-LTS builds are stable and we've not be able to find any breakages. (And we're using Ubuntu for developer workstations...)

I was impressed by 10.04, but there has always been one problem, the gain control on microphones just doesn't exist in a graphical form. You've always got to drop to a console and use the NCURSES ALSA mixer. Then set it up to always do that on boot. Windows 95 had a basic graphical mixer 16 years years ago.

The gui interface is called sound and you can open it by typing "sudo gnome-volume-control"

Anyhow I invite everybody to try ubuntu 11.04 (now in beta, or in a few weeks the stable release) and see that most of the point made by ryan paul are just FUD. Unity is REALLY beautiful.

And I would like to point to ryan that a tight schedule is the main difference between debian and ubuntu. 5 years after the split of the two we can say that a tight schedule is a good thing for improvement.

I was impressed by 10.04, but there has always been one problem, the gain control on microphones just doesn't exist in a graphical form. You've always got to drop to a console and use the NCURSES ALSA mixer. Then set it up to always do that on boot. Windows 95 had a basic graphical mixer 16 years years ago.

What's all these comments about the article creating FUD? Did you even read it? Most of the article highlights the many positive things about Unity while mentioning some existing design choices hopefully to be fixed before release. If this is FUD in your eyes I'd recommend som glasses.

I'll take both GNOME 3 and Unity for a test spin and I will probably love some aspects of one and some of the other.

If an existing user on Gnome 2.x was to upgrade to 11.04 via the usual system, wouldn't they stay on Gnome 2.x? Gnome is still a prerequisite for a lot of Ubuntu's applications, so it's not going to get removed or anything, right? Just trying to get an idea as to whether Unity is actually going to be forced on upgrading users, or if it's just for new installs that it'll be a default. Article suggests the former, but experience upgrading for me back when I used to run earlier versions of Kubuntu would suggest the latter.

Way to miss the forest. drummania basically told Scorp1us that if he didn't like the way Unity worked, he was free to fix it himself, which is one of the most overused and arrogant attitudes that has plagued the FOSS community for the past decade and a half, IMO.

That's not what I read. Rather, it was a poorly defined statement suggesting he contribute. Sure, you can read whatever things you want into it, if it reinforces your distaste for the FOSS community. As people have noted in follow up comments, one doesn't need to be a programmer to submit suggestions or ideas.

mascarpone wrote:

it's just ryan that is paid to spread FUD and low quality garbage/opinions, labeled as factual articles.

And how did you get that out of what you quoted?

No. That's a pretty common attitude in a lot of projects. Users see that the project appears to be jumping the shark. The dare complain and get told to lump it or leave it and that they can start coding if they want something better/different.

On the one hand, Free Software doesn't have the "upgrade treadmill" problem driving gratuitous changes and upgrades. However, it does have the "personal hobby" mentality in some projects that drives the same thing.

Someone starts cluelessly fixating on MacOS or PhoneOS and the rest of us get to go along for the ride.

Hopefully the old interfaces will be forked continued to be maintained.

it's just ryan that is paid to spread FUD and low quality garbage/opinions, labeled as factual articles.

Ryan says: "Unity is arguably a strong improvement over the conventional GNOME 2.x environment for day-to-day use. The breadth of the changes may be disorienting for some users, but most will like what they see when Unity lands on their desktop at the end of the month."

If this is meant to be FUD, he's not doing it right.

No. That's not FUD, that's drinking the cool-aid.

I think one shell to rule them all is a fundementaly flawed idea. Leave stuff like this on the netbook edition.

1) the upper bar seemed frozen for manipulation. I got rid of Evolution on my netbook (I don't use it), but still had that annoying email icon. I try to double-click and do weird stuff to get rid of it, but I can't manipulate the icons in that tool bar to get rid of it. Am I missing something? It wasn't intuitive if I am.

2) I found it annoying opening up the categories on the side to then sift through large icons for apps I want to use. When I use a file manager, I like detail views...just show me names and maybe a little icon. Again, am I missing some way to alter how this looks?

3) It was sort of a pain to do file management. I can't recall a specific example off the top of my head, but I just remember it was annoying. (I stopped using it like 6 months ago. *cough* )

I'm looking forward to trying it again, but I really don't like them dumbing down a computer interface to look like an oversized iPod.

I'll adapt to the new UI. I may even like it, we'll see. But whenever I see a Linux article I vainly hope it goes something like this: "Finally! Hardware manufacturers wake up to the previously untapped market of Linux users".

You will then hear a small voice off in the distance proclaiming...Yes! I finally got a decent driver!

It will be interesting to see where this thing goes; Canonical has come up with a lot of great ideas, but they seem to have issues with actually polishing and finishing anything, before moving on to the next, great idea; which is something I'm much more forgiving of in a non-profit, community effort like KDE, and less forgiving of in a for-profit corporation.

@Scorp1us Ubuntu is open source. You are always welcomed to contribute.

Not everyone is a programmer. Some people want to just use Linux without having to change the code in the OS itself.

And some people want to use Windows without editing the Registry, but if you want to do many things, it's the only way. Personally, I'll take editing plain-text files over editing the Registry any day.

Its amusing to me that so many intelligent geeks could be so stupid. Ubuntu's goal from day one has been to make Linux usable for the complete tech newbie. All these accusations that they are dumbing down Ubuntu is simply evidence that Canonical is finally starting to be successful in their goal. After years of only ever being able to appeal to mid level power users who didn't wanna deal with a "real mans distro" but still wanted something geeky to play with, finally Ubuntu is aiming itself squarely at the uninitiated, great unwashed.

I can sympathise with these power users to a degree, their OS of choice is abandoning them and starting to appeal to a completely different set of users. But really, if they had any self awareness they would realise that this was always the goal of Ubuntu. The mantra of Ubuntu was "Linux for human beings", not "Linux for power users who prefer GUI to command line"

"""The interface for browsing available applications sticks out as a particularly weak part of the user experience. The mechanism for switching between application categories is irksome and visually tacky. The lists of random packages from the repositories, which are presented as applications that are available for installation in the launcher, are distracting and largely superfluous."""

I like Unity, because how it unclutters the UI... But when you click the Ubuntu button you get to THAT! You're right, that is EXTREMELY annoying, with those humongous icons that are so totally pointless - WTF duplicate the fast-access feature of the dock, but one extra click away, with those patronisingly large icons, and hide the programs menu behind one further click?

And "patronisingly large" is really one of it's features: fonts are so large, padding around icons so wide, and empty areas so vast that it feels like my monitor suddenly shrunk by half.

I just have to wait for ATI to release their new driver and then for Unity to work on it to use it full time on my laptop. But, I use it on my work machine in my lab and I really liked Unity :D. The only annoying thing is the global menu. I have a large screen and it really sucks. But I could disable it by removing "indicator-appmenu" I really don't understand how people use the iMac with the global menu, doesn't it make it hard to use the GUI?

Its amusing to me that so many intelligent geeks could be so stupid. Ubuntu's goal from day one has been to make Linux usable for the complete tech newbie. All these accusations that they are dumbing down Ubuntu is simply evidence that Canonical is finally starting to be successful in their goal. After years of only ever being able to appeal to mid level power users who didn't wanna deal with a "real mans distro" but still wanted something geeky to play with, finally Ubuntu is aiming itself squarely at the uninitiated, great unwashed.

They took their sweet time just to start aiming... seven years, no less.

Like a new shell is gonna make a difference anyway. If anything, serves as a wonderful metaphor for Linux on the desktop, where every problem is always going to be fixed by a new and shining shell, leaving all the important issues unresolved.